An empty plate: Why we are losing the battle for our food system, why it matters, and how we can win it back

This book shows how the South African food system operates and how it has far-reaching and often devastating effects on land, people and poverty. This story is fundamentally about power - who has it, who doesn't, and why. It attempts to answer these two questions: How did we get to this position, where the financial interests of the few have effectively been deemed more important than the wellbeing of the vast majority? And how could we go about changing this and build for ourselves a more equitable and just system? Most South Africans - even in rural areas - do not produce any of their own food or purchase it directly from farmers. Instead we buy our food from retailers or fast food outlets or restaurants or informal traders. In addition, a growing proportion of what we eat has been modified from its 'natural' state; processed and flavoured and packaged into something very different than what left the farm. In its journey from field to plate most agricultural produce passes through a number of intermediaries - wholesalers, processors, distributors, supermarkets - before it arrives as our dinner.Most of us do not give much thought to how our food gets to our plates, or how our choices of what to feed our families can have devastating impacts for someone else's family. When we start to think about the provenance of our food as located in a complex system we begin to see that every activity and every participant is connected. While farming incomes decline and farm workers struggle to feed their families, the profits of South Africa's food retail giants and big processors increase. While farms go out of business and farm workers lose their jobs, the number of supermarket outlets increases each year. The big four supermarket groups in South Africa now control more than two-thirds of the retail food market. Much of this profit growth has been derived from a steady increase in the difference between what farmers get paid and what consumers pay for food. The gap has increased for almost every other basic food item over the past twenty years. Food insecurity, the failure of land reform and the rising cost of food are not inevitable outcomes - rather they reflect just one way of organising our food system.Things could be very different, and all around South Africa there are individuals and communities who are fighting for and building alternatives.

About the Author :
Tracy Ledger has a PhD in economic anthropology from University of the Witwatersrand and a master's degree in agricultural economics from the University of Stellenbosch. She spent twelve years working as an economist in banking, stockbroking and asset management, followed by fourteen years as an independent researcher, focusing on local economic development, rural development and food systems. Her particular areas of interest are alternative food networks, food security and local economic development. She has undertaken research in this area for clients Oxfam, UNISA, DIFD, GIZ.